HIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 



UNItED states op AMERICA. 

■m 



Bible View of Slavery. 



Bible View of Slavery. 



;2l ?Diacoursc, 



DELIVERED AT THE JEWISH STNAQOGDE, " UN AI JESHUBUM," NEW TOKK, OM 
THE DAY OF THE NATIOXAI, FAST, JAN. 4, 1861. 



yhY THE 

REV. M. J. RAPHALL, M.A., Ph. Dr. 

BABBI PREACHER, AT TUB SYNAGOGUE, ORF.ENE STREET, NEW TOBK. 






NEW YORK: 

RuDD k. Carleton, 130 Grand Street, 

BROOKS BUILDING, COR. OF BROADWAY. 

M DCCC I.XI. 



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PEEFATOIIY EEMAEKS. 



WiiEX the discourse which is now placed before 
the public in pamphlet Ibrm, was iirst delivered, I 
little anticipated that it would attract and occupy 
])nblic attention in the manner and to the extent 
which it has done. The subject had not been 
chosen by myself; I was called upon to expose a 
jiernicious fallacy. Under a strong sense of duty I 
did it ; not by any reasoning of my own, but by a 
statement of facts, supported by the authority of 
J^ciipture. That such a sober statement, and the 
inferences to be deduced therefroin, should ])rove 
very unpalatable to men of extreme opinions, and 
that they should do their utmost to refute my dis- 
course, was naturally to be expected. Accord- 
ingly they have tried their best, from newspaper 
paragraphs of a few lines up to elaborate articles 
of many columns. With what success, it is for 
public opinion to decide. It seejns, however, that 
the public, like myself, thinks " that tacts are facts." 
So long as the one great tact is not produced — the 

TEXT OF SCKIPTUKE WHICH DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY 
DEXOUXOES SLAVEHOLDING AS A SIX SO long aS this 

has not been clone, my statements remain incontro- 
vertible. As that text has not been quoted, Avhich 
it never can be, sixce it does not exist, all the 
llery attacks and declamations against me are but 
" leather and prunella." 

It is true that the attempt has been made to find 
such a text ; and that Matt. vii. 12 : "All things 
v/hatsoever you would that men should do to you, do 



via TREFATOUY REMARKS. 

you even so to them," has been quoted. I might 
answer that this great precept, the practical explica- 
tion of the command, " Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bour like thyself," was not only known to the 
ancient Hebrews and even to heathen Greeks, full 
four hundred years before the sermon on the Mount, 
but likewise to all Christian nations upwards of 1800 
years after that sermon ; but that by ancients and 
moderns it never was brought to bear on slavehold- 
ing till within the last (comparatively) lew years. 
But I j)refei- to take my answer irom the New Tes- 
tament. The writer of the "Epistle to Piiilemon" 
had, before his conversion, been the disciple of 
Gamaliel, a descendant of that Hebrew sage, Avho, 
in the Talmud (tr Sabbath fo. 31), declares that the 
rule " whatsoever is hateful to thee do not unto 
others" is the sum and substance of the Law. After 
liis conversion he became one of the principal teach- 
ers of Christianity. But though he must have 
entered into the spirit of the sermon on the Mount 
far more fully and truly than the writers in the 
" Tribune" can do — and perhaps for that very 
reason, he sent back the fugitive slave, Onesimus, 
to his owner. Proof sufficient on the authority of 
Paul of Tarsus, that the text, Matt. vii. 12, has no 
special application to slaveholding. 

The long tirade in the " Tribune" of this day 
must go for what it is worth. It is before the pub- 
lic ; so is my discourse. Each of the two must 
stand or fall on its own merits. But I am con- 
vinced my discourse will not fall, for it embodies "the 
word of our God, which standeth good for ever.'' 

M. J. R. 

New York, Jan. 15th, 1861. 



Sermon 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



" The people of Nineveh believed in God, proclaimed a fast, 
and put on sackcloth from the greatest of tiiem even to the least 
of them. For the matter reached the King of Nineveh, and ho 
arose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with 
sackcloth, and seated himself in ashes. And ho caused it to bo 
proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by decree of the 
King and his magnates, saj-ingfLet neither man nor beast, herd 
nor Hock, taste anything; led tliem not feed nor drink any water. 
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry with 
all their strength unto God; and let them turn ever}^ individual 
from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. 
"Who knoweth but God may turn and* relent; yea, turn away 
from his fierce anger, that we perish not. And God saw their 
work-s, that they turned from their evil way : and God relented 
of the evil which he had said that he would inflict upon them ; 
and he did it not." — Jonah iii. 5-10. 

1. My Friend.s — We meet here tbis clay under 
circuMistances not unlike those described in my 
text. Not many weeks ago, on the invitation of 
the Governor of this State, we joined in thanks- 
giving for the manifold mercies the Lord had 



12 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

vouchsafed to bestow upon us during the past 
year. But "coming events cast their shadows 
before," and our thanks were tinctured by the 
foreboding of danger impending over our countr3^ 
The evil we then dreaded has now come home to' 
us. As the cry of the prophet, " Yet forty days 
and Nineveh shall be overthrown," alarmed that 
people, so the proclamation, " the Union is dis- 
solved," has startled the inhabitants of the United 
States. The President — the chief officer placed 
at the helm to guide the vessel of the common- 
wealth on its course — stands aghast at the signs 
of the times. He sees the black clouds gathering- 
overhead, he hears the fierce howl of the tornado, 
and the hoarse roar of the breakers all around 
him. An aged man, his great experience has 
taught him that " man's extremity is God's oppor- 
tunity;" and conscious of his own inability to 
weather the storm without help from on high, he 
calls upon every individual " to feel a personal 
responsibility towa,rds God," even as the King 
of Nineveh desired all persons " to cry unto God 
with all their strength " — and it is in compliance 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 13 

•witli this call of the Chief Magistrate of these 
United States that we, like the many millions of 
our fellow-citizens, devote this day to public 
prayer and humiliation. The President, more 
polished, though less plain-spoken than the King 
of Nineveh, does not in direct terms require every 
one to turn from his " evil way, and from the 
violence that is in their hands." But to me these 
two expressions seem in a most signal manner 
to describe our difficulty, and to apply to the 
actual condition of things both North and South. 
The "violence in their hands" is the grl^t 
reproach we must address to the sturdy fire-eater 
who in the hearing of an indignant world pro- 
claims " Cotton is King." King indeed, and a 
most righteous and merciful one, no doubt, in 
his own conceit ; since he only tars and feathers 
the wretches who fall in his power, and whom he 
suspects of not being sufficiently loyal and obedi- 
ent to his sovereignty. And the " evil of his 
ways" is the reproach we must address to the 
sleek rhetorician who in the hearing of a God- 
fearing world declares " Thought is King." King 



14 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

indeed, and a most mighty and magnanimous 
one — no doubt — in his own conceit ; all-powerful 
to foment and augment the strife, though power- 
less to allay it. Of all the fallacies coined in 
the north, the arrogant assertion that " Thought 
is King" is the very last with which, at this 
present crisis, the patience of a reflecting people 
should have been abused. For in fact, the 
material greatness of the United States seems 
to have completely outgrown the grasp of our 
most gifted minds ; so that urgent as is our need, 
pi^ssing as is the occasion, no man or set of men 
have yet come forward capable of rising above 
the narrow horizon of sectional influences and 
prejudices, and with views enlightened, just, and 
beneficent, to embrace the entirety of the Union 
and to secure its prosperity and preservation, 
No, my friends, " Cotton" is not King, and 
" Human thought " is not King. Adonai Meleck. 
The Lord alone is J^ing! Umalkootho haJcol 
mashala, and His royalty rcigneth over all. This 
very day of humiliation and of prayer — what is it 
but the recognition of His supremacy, the confes- 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 15 

sion of His power and of our own weakness, the 
supplications which our distress addresses to Ilis 
mercy ? But in order that these suppHcations 
may be graciously received, that His supreme 
protection may be vouchsafed unto our Country, 
it is necessary that we should begin as the people 
of Nineveh did ; we must " believe in God." — 
And when I say " we," I do not mean merely us 
handful of peaceable Union-loving Hebrews, but 
I mean the whole of the people throughout the 
United States : the President and his Cabinet, 
the President elect and his advisers, the leaders 
of public opinion, North and South, If they 
truly and honestly desire to save our country, let 
them believe in God and in His Holy Word ; and 
then when the authority of the Constitution is to 
be set aside for a higher Law, they will be able 
to appeal to the highest Law of all, the revealed 
Law and Word of God, which affords its supreme 
sanction to the Constitution. There can iJe no 
doubt, my friends, that however much of per- 
sonal ambition, selfishness, pride, and obstinacy, 
there may enter into the present unhappy quarrel 



16 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

between the two great sections of the Common- 
wealth — I say it is certain that the origin of the 
quarrel itself is the difference of opinion respecting 
slave-holding, which the one section denounces 
as sinful — aye, as the most heinous of sins — while 
the other section upholds it as perfectly lawful. 
It is the province of statesmen to examine the 
circumstances under which the Constitution of 
the United States recognises the legality of slave- 
holding ; and under what circumstances, if any, 
it becomes a crime against the law of the land* 
But the question whether slave-holding is a sin 
before God, is one that belongs to the theologian. 
I have been requested by prominent citizens of 
other denominations, that I should on this day 
examine the Bible view of slavery, as the reli- 
gious mind of the country requires to be enlight- 
ened on the subject. 

In compliance with that request, and after 
humbl}^ praying that the Father of Truth and of 
Mercy may enlighten my mind, and direct my 
^Yords for good, I am about to solicit your earnest 
attention, my friends, to this serious subject. My 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 17 

discourse will, I fear, take up more of your time 
than I am in the habit of exacting from you ; 
but this is a day of penitence, and the having to 
listen to a long and sober discourse must be 
accounted as a penitential infliction. 

The subject of my investigation falls into three 
parts : — 

First, How far back can we trace the existence 
of slavery ? 

Secondly, Is slavcholding condemned as a siu 
in sacred Scripture? 

Thirdly, What was the condition of the slave 
in Biblical times, and among the Hebrews ; and 
saying with our Father Jacob, " for Thy help, 
I hope, O Lord!" I proceed to examine the ques- 
tion, how far back can we trace the existence of 
slavery ? • 

I. It is generally admitted, that slavery had 
its origin in war, public or private. The victor 
having it in his power to take the life of his van- 
quished enemy, prefers to let him live, and 
reduces him to bondage. The life he has spared, 
the body he might have mutilated or destroyed. 



18 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVEEY, 

become his absolute property. He may dispose 
of it in any way he pleases. Such was, and 
through a great part of the world still is, the 
brutal law of force. When this state of things 
first began, it is next to impossible to decide. If 
we consult Sacred Scripture, the oldest and most 
truthful collection of records now or at any time 
in existence, we find the word Ngebed " slave," 
which the English version renders " servant," 
first used by Noah, who, in Grenesis ix. 25, curses 
the descendants of his son Ham, by saying they 
should be Ngebed Ngabadim, the " meanest of 
slaves," or as the English version has it " servant 
of servants." The question naturally arises how 
came Noah to use the expression ? How came 
he to know anything of slavery ? There existed 
not at that time any human being on e^th except 
Noah and his family of three sons, apparently by 
one mother, born free and equal, with their wives 
and children. Noah had no slaves. From tlie 
time that he quitted the ark he could have 
none. It therefore becomes evident that Noah's 
acquaintance with the w^ord slave and the nature 



BIBLE VIKW OF SLAVERY. • 19 

of slavery must date from before the Flood, and 
existed in his memory only until the crime of 
Ham called it forth. You and I may regret that 
in his anger Noah should from beneath the waters 
of wrath again have fished up the idea and prac- 
tice of slavery ; but that he did so is a fact which 
rests on the authority of Scripture. I am there- 
fore justified when tracing slavery as far back as 
it can be traced, I arrive at the conclusion, that 
next to the domestic relations of husband and 
wife, parents and children, the oldest relation of 
society with which we are acquainted is that of 
master and slave. 

Let us for an instant stop at this curse by 
Noah with which slavery after the Flood is 
recalled into existence. Among the many pro- 
phecies contained in the Bible and having refer- 
ence to particular times, persons, and events, 
there are three singular predictions referring to 
three distinct races or peoples, which seem to be 
intended for all times, and accordingly rcmoin in 
full force to this day. The first of these is the 
doom of Ham's descendants, the African race, 



20 • BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

pronounced upwards of -4,000 years ago. The 
second is the character of the descendants of 
Ishmael, the Arabs, pronounced nearly 4,000 
years ago ; and the third and last is the promise 
of continued and indestructible nationality pro- 
mised to us, Israelites, full 2500 years ago. It 
has been said that the knowledge that a parti- 
cular prophecy exists, helps to work out its ful- 
filment, and I am quite willing to allow that 
with us, Israelites, such is the fact. The know- 
ledge we have of God's gracious promises renders 
us imperishable, even though the greatest and most 
powerful nations of the olden time have utterly 
perished. It may be doubted whether the fanatic 
Arab of the desert ever heard of the prophecy 
that he is to be a " wild man, his hand against 
every man, and every man's hand against him," 
(Gen, xvi, 12.) But you and I, and all men of 
ordinary education, know that this prediction at 
all times has been, and is now, literally fulfilled, 
and that it has never been interrupted. Not 
even when the followers of Mahomet rushed 
forth to spread his doctrines, the Koran in one 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 21 

hand and the sword in the other, and when Arab 
conquest rendered the fairest portion of the Old 
World subject to the empire of their Caliph, did 
the descendants of Ishmael renounce their charac- 
teristics. Even the boasted civilization of the 
present century, and frequent intercourse with 
Western travellers, still leave the Arab a wild 
man, "his hand against everybody, and every 
man's hand against him," a most convincing and 
durable proof that the Word of God is true, 
and that the prophecies of the Bible were dictated 
by the Spirit of the Most High. But though, in 
the case of the Arab, it is barely possible that 
he may be acquainted with the prediction made 
to Hagar, yet we may be sure that the fetish- 
serving benighted African has no knowledge of 
Noah's prediction; which, however, is nowhere 
more fully or more atrociously carried out than 
in the native home of the African. Yv^itness the 
horrid fact, that the King of Dahomy is, at*his 
very time, filling a large and deep trench with 
human blood, sufficient to float a good-sized 
boat ; that the victims arc innocent men, murdered 



22 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

to satisfy some freak of what he calls his religion ; 
and that this monstrous and most fiendish act has 
met with no opposition, either from the pious 
indignation of Great Britain, or from the zealous 
humanity of our country. 

Now I am well aware that the Biblical critics 
called Eationalists, who deny the possibility of 
prophecy, have taken upon themselves to assert, 
that the prediction of which I have spoken was 
never uttered by IsToah, but was made up many 
centuries after him by the Hebrew writer of the 
Bible, in order to smoothe over the extermina- 
tion of the Canaanites, whose land was*conquered 
by the Israelites. With superhuman knowledge 
like that of the Eationalists, who claim to sit in 
judgment on the Word of God, I do not think it 
worth while to argue. But I would ask you 
how is it that a prediction, manufactured for a 
purpose — a fraud in short, and that a most base 
ancbunholy one, should nevertheless continue in 
force, and be carried out during four, or three, or 
even two thousand years; for a thousand years 
more or less can here make no difference. Noah, 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 23 

on the occasion in question, bestows on his son 
Shem a spiritual blessing: "Blessed be the Lord, 
the God of Shem," and to this day it remains a 
fact which cannot be denied, that whatever know- 
ledge of God and of religious truth is possessed 
by the human race, has been promulgated by the 
descendants of Shem. Noah bestows on his son 
Japheth a blessing, chiefly temporal, but par- 
taking also of spiritual good. " May God enlarge 
Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem," 
and to this day it remains a fact which cannot be 
denied, that the descendants of Japheth (Euro- 
peans and their offspring) have been enlarged 
so that they possess dominion in every part of 
the earth ; while, at the same time, they share in 
that knowledge of religious truth which the 
descendants of Shem were the first to promul- 
gate. Noah did not bestow any blessing on his 
son Ham, but uttered a bitter curse against his 
descendants, and to this day it remains a fact 
which cannot be gainsaid that in his own native 
home, and generally throughout the world, the 
"unfortunate negro is indeed the meanest of slaves. 



24 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

Mucli has been said respecting the inferiority of 
his intellectual powers, and that no man of his 
race has ever inscribed his name on the Pantheon 
of human excellence, either mental or moral. 
But this is a subject I will not discuss. I do 
not attempt to build up a theory, nor yet to 
defend the moral government of Providence. I 
state facts; and having done so, I remind you 
that our own fathers were slaves in Egypt, and 
afflicted four hundred years ; and then I bid you 
reflect on the words of inspired Isaiah (Iv. 8.), 
'' My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." 

II. Iwtving thus, on the authority of the sacred 
Scripture, traced slavery back to the remotest 
period, I next request your attention to the ques- 
tion, "Is slaveholding condemned as a sin in 
sacred Scripture ?" How this question can at all 
arise in the mind of any man that has received a 
religious education, and is acquainted with the 
history of the Bible, is a phenomenon I cannot 
explain to myself, and which fifty j^ears ago no 
man dreamed of. But we live in times when we 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 2o 

must not be surprised at anything. Last Sunday 
an eminent preacher is reported to have declared 
from the pulpit, " That the Old Testament require- 
ments served their purpose during the physical 
and social development of mankind, and were 
rendered no longer necessary now when we were 
to be guided by the superior doctrines of the New 
in the moral instruction of the race." I had 
always thought that in the " moral instruction of 
the race," the requirements of Jewish Scriptures 
and Christian Scriptures were identically the same ; 
that to abstain from murder, theft, adultery, that 
" to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk hum- 
bly with God," were '' requirements" equally 
imperative in the one course of instruction as in 
the other. But it appears I was mistaken. "We 
have altered all that now," says this eminent divine, 
in happy imitation of Molicre's physician, whose 
new theory removed the heart from the left side of 
the human body to the right. But when I remem- 
ber that the "now" refers to a period of which you 
all, though no very aged men, witnessed the rise ; 
when, moreover, I remember that the "we" the 



26 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

reverend preaclier speaks of, is limited to a few im- 
pulsive declaimers, gifted with great zeal, but little 
knowledge ; more eloquent than learned ; better 
able to excite our passions than to satisfy our 
reason ; and when, lastly, I remember the scorn 
with which sacred Scripture (Deut. xxxii. 18) 
speaks of " newfangled notions, lately sprung up, 
which your fathers esteemed not;" when I con- 
sider all this, I think you and I had rather continue 
to take our "requirements for moral instruction" 
from Moses and the Prophets than from the elo- 
quent preacher of Brooklyn, But as that reve- 
rend gentleman takes a lead among those who most 
loudly and most vehemently denounce slavehold- 
ing as a sin, I wished to convince myself whether 
he had any Scripture warranty for so doing ; and 
whether such denunciation was one of those 
" requirements for moral instruction" advanced 
by the New Testament. I have accordingly 
examined the various books of Christian Scrip- 
ture, and find that they afford the reverend gen- 
tleman and his compeers no authority whatever for 
his and their declamations. The New Testament 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 27 

nowhere, directly or indirectl}^, condemns slave- 
holding, which, indeed, is proved by the universal 
practice of all Christian nations during many cen- 
turies. Receiving slavery as one of the condi- 
tions of society, the New Testament nowhere 
interferes with or contradicts the slave code of 
Moses ; it even preserves a letter written by one 
of the most eminent Christian teachers to a slave- 
owner on sending back to him his runaway slave. 
And when we next refer to the history and 
" requirements" of our own sacred Scriptures, we 
find that on the most solemn occasion therein 
recorded, when God gave the Ten Command- 
ments on Mount Sinai — 

There where His linger scorched, the tablet shone; 
There where His shadow on his people shone 
His glory, shrouded in its garb of fire, 
Himself no eye might see and not expire. 

Even on that most solemn .and most holy occa- 
sion, slaveholding is not only recognised and 
sanctioned as an integral part of the social struc- 
ture, when it is commanded that the Sabbath of 



28 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

the Lord is to bring rest to Ngabdecna ve Ama- 
ihecka^ " Thy male slave and thy female slave" 
(Exod. XX. 10 ; Deut. v. 14). But the property 
in slaves is placed under the same protection as 
any other species of lawful property, when it is 
said, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, 
or his field, or his male slave, or his female slave, 
or his ox, or his ass, or aught that belongeth to 
thy neighbor" (Ibid. xx. 17; v. 21). That the 
male slave and female slave here spoken of do 
not designate the Hebrew bondman, but the 
heathen slave, I shall presently show you. That 
the Ten Commandments are the word of God, and 
as such, of the very highest authority, is acknow- 
ledged by Christians as well as by Jews. I would 
therefore ask the reverend gentleman of Brook- 
lyn and his compeers — How dare you, in the 
face of the sanction and protection afforded to 
slave property in the Ten Commandments — how 
dare you denounce slaveholding as a sin? When 
you remember that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job 
— the men with whom the Almighty conversed, 
with whose names he emphatically connects his 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 29 

own most holy name, and to whom He vouchsafed 
to give the character of " perfect, upright, fearing 
God and eschewing evil" (Job i. 8) — that all these 
men were slaveholders, does it not strike you that 
you are guilty of something very little short of 
blasphemy? And if you answer me, "Oh, in 
their time slaveholding was lawful, but now it has 
become a sin," I in my turn ask you, " When 
and by what authority you draw the line ?" Tell 
us the precise time when slaveholding ceased to 
be permitted, and became sinful?" When we 
remember the mischief which this inventing a new 
sin, not known to the Bible, is causing ; how it 
has exasperated the feelings of the South, and 
alarmed the conscience of the North, to a degree 
that men who should be brothers are on the point 
of embruing their hands in each other's blood, 
are we not entitled to ask the reverend preacher of 
Brooklyn, " What right have you to insult and 
exasperate thousands of God-fearing, law-abiding 
citizens, whose moral worth and patriotism, whose 
purity of conscience and of life, are fully equal 
to your own? What right have you to place 



30 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

yonder grey-headed philanthropist on a level with 
a murderer, or yonder virtuous mother of a family 
on a line with an adulteress, or yonder honorable 
and honest man in one rank with a thief, and all 
this solely because they exercise a right which 
your own fathers and progenitors, during many 
generations, held and exercised without reproach 
or compunction. You profess to frame j^our 
" moral instruction of the race" according to the 
" requirements" of the New Testament — but tell 
us where and by whom it was said, " "Whosoever 
shall say to his neighbor, Raca (worthless sinner), 
shall be in danger of the council ; but whosoever 
shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of the judg- 
ment." My friends, I find, and I am sorry to 
find, that I am delivering a pro-slavery discourse. 
I am no friend to slavery in the abstract, and 
still less friendly to the practical working of slav- 
ery. But I stand here as a teacher in Israel ; 
not to place before you my own feelings and 
opinions, but to propound to you the word of 
God, the Bible view of slavery. With a due 
sense of my responsibility, I must state to you 



BIBLE VIKW OF SLAVERY. 31 

tlie truth and nothing but the truth, however 
unpalatable or unpopular that truth may be. 

III. It remains for me now to examine what 
was the condition of the slave in Biblical times 
and among the Hebrews, And here at once we 
must distinguish between the Hebrew bondman 
and the heathen slave. The former could only be 
reduced to bondage from two causes. If he had 
committed theft and had not wherewithal to make 
full restitution, he was " sold for his theft." 
(Exod. xxii. 3.) Or if he became so miserably 
poor that he could not sustain life except by 
begging, he had permission to " sell" or bind him- 
self in servitude. (Levit. xxv. 39 et seq.) But 
in either case his servitude was limited in duration 
and character. " Six years shall he serve, and in 
the seventh he shall go out free for nothing" 
(Exod, xxi. 2). And if even the bondman pre- 
ferred bondage to freedom, he could not, under 
any circumstances, be held to servitude longer 
than the jubilee then next coming. At that 
period the estate which had originally belonged 
to his father, or remoter ancestor, reverted to his 



32 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

possession, so that he went forth at once a freeman 
and a landed proprietor. As his privilege of 
Hebrew citizen was thus only suspended, and the 
law, in permitting him to be sold, contemplated 
his restoration to his full rights, it took care that 
during his servitude his mind should not be 
crushed to the abject and cringing condition of a 
slave. " Ye shall not rule over one another with 
rigor," is the provision of the law. (Lev. xxv. 
46.) Thus he is fenced round with protection 
against any abuse of power on the part of his 
employer ; and tradition so strictly interpreted the 
letter of the law in his favor, that it was a com- 
mon saying of Biblical times and homes, which 
Maimonides has preserved to us, that " he who 
buys an Hebrew bondman gets himself a master." 
Though in servitude, this Hebrew was in nowise 
exempt from his religious duties. Therefore it is 
not for him or his that the Ten Commandments 
stipulated for rest on Xhe Sabbath of the Lord ; 
for his employer could not compel him to work 
on that day; and if he did work of his own 
accord, he became guilty of death, like any other 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 33 

Sabbath-breaker. Neither does the prohibition, 
thou shalt not covet the property of thy neigh- 
bor," apply to him, for he was not the property of 
his employer. In fact, between the Hebrew 
bondman and the Southern slave there is no 
point of resemblance. There were, however, 
slaves among the Hebrews, whose general condi- 
tion was analogous to that of their Southern fellow 
sufferers. That was the heathen slave, who was 
to be bought " from the heathens that were round 
about the land of Israel, or from the heathen 
strangers that sojourned in the land ; they should 
be a possession, to be bequeathed as an inheritance 
to the owner's children, after his death, for ever" 
(Levit. XXV. 44-46.) Over these heathen slaves 
the owner's property was absolute; he could put 
them to hard labor, to the utmost extent of their 
physical strength ; he could inflict on them any 
degree of chastisement short of injury to life 
and limb. If his heathen slave ran away or 
strayed from home, every Israelite was bound 
to bring or send him back, as he would have 

to do with any other portion of his neighbor's 
2- 



34 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

property that bad been lost or strayed. (Deut. 
xxii. 3.) 

Now, you ma}^, perhaps, ask me how I can 
reconcile this statement with the text of Scripture 
so frequently quoted against the Fugitive Slave 
Law, " Thou shalt not surrender unto his master 
the slave who has escaped from his master unto 
thee" (Deut. xxiii. 16). I answer you that, 
according to all legists, this text applies to a 
heathen slave, who, from any foreign country 
escapes from his master, even though that master 
be an Hebrew, residing out of the land of Israel. 
Such a slave — but such a slave only — is to find a 
permanent asylum in any part of the country he 
may choose. This interpretation is fully borne 
out by the words of the precept. The pronoun 
"thou," is not here used in the same sense as in 
the Ten Commandments. There it designates 
every soul in Israel individually; since every 
one has it in his power, and is in duty bound to 
obey the commandments. But as the se'curity 
and protection to be bestowed on the runaway 
slaves are beyond the power of any individual, and 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 35 

require the consent and concurrence of the whole 
communitv, the pronoun "thou" here means the 
whole of the people, and not one portion in oppo- 
sition to any other portion of the people. And 
as the expression remains the same thronghout 
the precept, "With thee he shall dwell, even 
among je, in the place he shall choose in one of 
thy gates where it liketh him best," it plainly 
shows that the whole of the land was open to 
him, and the whole of the people were to protect 
the fugitive, which could not have been carried 
out if it had applied to the slave who escaped 
from one tribe into the territory of another. Had 
the precept been expounded in any other than its 
strictly literal sense, it would have caused great 
confusion, since it would have nullified two other 
precepts of God's law ; that which directs that 
"slaves, like lands and houses, were to be inhe- 
rited for ever," and that which commands "pro- 
pert}^, lost or strayed, to be restored to the 
owner." Any other interpretation would, more- 
over, have caused heartburning and strife between 
the tribes, for men were as tenacious of their 



36 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

riglits and property in those days as they are 
now. But no second opinion was ever enter- 
tained ; the slave who ran away from Dan to 
Beersheba had to be given up, even as the run- 
away from South Carolina has to be given up by 
Massachusetts ; whilst the runaway from Edora, 
or from Syria, found an asylum in the land of 
Israel, as the runaway slave from Cuba or Brazil 
would find in New York. Accordingly, Shimei 
reclaimed and recovered his runaway slaves from 
Achish, king of Gath, at that time a vassal of 
Israel (Kings ii. 39, 40). And Saul of Tarsus 
sent back the runaway slave, Onesimus, unto his 
owner Philemon. But to surrender to a ruthless, 
lawless heathen, the wretched slave who had 
escaped from his cruelty, would have been to 
give up the fugitive to certain death, or at least 
to tortures repugnant to the spirit of God's law, 
the tender care of which protected the bird in its 
nest, the beast at the plough, and the slave in his 
degradation. Accordingly, the ex-tradition was 
not permitted in Palestine any more than it is in 
Canada. While thus the owner possessed full 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 37 

right over and security for his property, the exer- 
cise of that power was confined within certain 
limits which he could not outstep. His female 
slave was not to be the tool or castaway toy of 
his sensuality, nor could he sell her, but was 
bound to "let her go free," "because he had 
humbled her" (Deut. xxi. 1-i). His male slave 
was protected against excessive punishment ; for 
if the master in any way mutilated his slave, 
even to knock a single tooth out of his head, the 
slave became free (Exod. xxi. 26, 27). And 
while thus two of the worst passions of human 
nature, lust and cruelty, were kept under due 
restraint, the third bad passion, cupidity, was not 
permitted free scope ; for the law of God secured 
to the slave his Sabbaths and days of rest ; while 
public opinion, which in a country so densely 
peopled as Palestine must have been all-powerful, 
would not allow any slave-owner to impose 
heavier tasks on his slaves, or to feed them worse 
than his neighbors did. This, indeed, is the great 
distinction which the Bible view of slavery 
derives from its divine source. The slave is a 



38 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

jyerson m whom the dignity of human nature is 
to be respected ; he has rights. "Whereas, the 
heathen view of slavery which prevailed at Rome, 
and which, I am sorry to say, is adopted in the 
South, reduces the slave to a thing, and a thing 
can have no rights. The result to which the 
Bible view of slavery leads us, is — 1st. That 
slavery has existed since the earliest time ; 2d. 
That slaveholding is no sin, and that slave pro- 
perty is expressly placed under the protection of 
the Ten Commandments; 3d. That the slave is a 
person, and has rights not conflicting with the 
lawful exercise of the rights of his owner. If our 
Northern fellow-citizens, content with following 
the word of God, would not insist on being 
"righteous overmuch," or denouncing "sin" 
which the Bible knows not, but which is plainly 
taught by the precepts of men — they would 
entertain more equity and less ill feeling 
towards their Southern brethren. And if our 
Southern follow-citizcns would adopt the Bible 
view of slavery, and discard that heathen slave 
code, which permits a feW bad men to indulge in 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVEIIY. 39 

an abuse of power that throws a stigma and dis- 
grace on the whole body of slaveholders — if both 
North and South would do what is right, then 
" God would see their works and that they turned 
from the evil of their ways ;" and in their case, as 
in that of the people of Nineveh, would mercifully 
avert the impending evil, for with Ilim alone is 
the power to do so. Therefore let us pray. 

Almighty and merciful God, we approach Thee 
this day, our hearts heavy with the weight of our 
sins, our looks downcast under the sense of our 
ingratitude, national and individual. Thou, Father 
all-bounteous, hast in Thine abundant goodness 
plentifully bestowed upon us every good and 
every blessing, spiritual, mental, temporal, that in 
the present state of the world men can desire. 
But we have perverted and abused Thy gifts; in 
our arrogance and selfishness we have contrived 
to extract poison from Thy most precious boons ; 
the spiritual have degenerated into unloving self- 
righteousness; the mental have rendered us vain- 
glorious and conceited; and the temporal have 
degraded us into Mammon-worshipping slaves of 



•10 BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

avarice. Intoxicated with our prosperity, we 
have forgotten Thee ; drunken with pride, we reel 
on towards the precipice of disunion and ruin. 
What hand can stay us if it be not Thine, God ! 
Thou who art long-suffering as Thou art almighty, 
to Thee we turn in the hour of our utmost need. 
Hear us, Father, for on Thee our hopes are fixed. 
Help us, Father, for thou alone canst do it. 
Punish us not according to our arrogance ; afflict 
us not according to our deserts. Remove from 
our breasts the heart of stone, and from our 
minds the obstinacy of self-willed pride. Extend 
thy grace unto us, that we may acknowledge our 
own transgressions. Open our eyes that we may 
behold and renounce the wrong we inflict on our 
neighbors. God of justice and of mercy, suffer 
not despots to rejoice at our dissensions, nor 
tyrants to triumph over our fall. Let them not 
point at us the finger of scorn, or sa,j, "Look 
there at the fruits of freedom and self-government 
— of equal rights and popular sovereignty — strife 
without any real cause — destruction without any 
sufficient motive." Oh, let not them who trust in 



BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 41 

Thee be put to shame, or those who seek Thee be 
disgraced. Ahiiighty God, extend thy gracious 
protection to the United States. Pour out over 
the citizens thereof, and those whom they have 
elected to be their rulers, the spirit of grace and 
of supplication, the spirit of wisdom and brotherly 
love, so that henceforth, even as hitherto, they 
may know that union is strength, and that it is 
good and pleasant for brethren to dwell together 
in unity. And above all things. Lord merciful 
and gracious, avert the calamity of civil war from 
our midst. If in Thy supreme wisdom Thou 
bast decreed that this vast commonwealth, which 
has risen under Thy protection, and prospered 
under Thy blessing, shall now be separated, then 
we beseech Thee let that separation be peaceable ; 
that no human blood may be shed, but that the 
canopy of Thy peace may still remain spread 
over all the land. May we address our prayers to 
Thee, Lord, at an acceptable time; maycst 
Thou, O God, in Thy abundant mercy, answer us 
with the truth of Thy salvation. Amen. 
THE END. 



REJDT rniS ll^EEK. 



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DELIVEKEn AT THE JEWISH SYNAGOGUE, "BNAI JESUUEUJI," NEW YOniC, ON 
THE DAY OP TIip NATIONAL FAST, JAN. 4, 18G1. 



BY THE 

A 
REV. M.^' J. RAPHALL, M.A., Ph. Dr. 

KABM rUEACIIER, AT THE SYXAGOGUK, GREENE STREET, NEW YORIi 



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